I find this to be a rather interesting subject. I used to have this kind of reductionist point of view like @alossforwords has. Whatever the person does, that who they are. And you can look at it the same: whatever I do and think, that’s who I am.
How could it be otherwise? How could a person be not themselves? Well, as I say, there’s certain reductionistic logic to that. It puts things in a nice box, wraps it up with a bow and everything, and voila! A self.
I’m 52 now, and for 50 years of my life, that was my point of view. I was myself. All I did and thought was me. It had a kind of consistency that was reassuring. I had a stable identity and personality. I behaved in pretty much the same way when faced by various common situations. I solved problems in a particular, highly recognizable daloonish kind of way.
Then something strange started happening. First it was kind of cool. My brain started working faster and faster. I could understand things instantly—highly complext things. I could talk usefully about new ideas that I encountered in an environment rife with experts of all kinds.
It was weird. I kept doubting myself. How could these people be taking me seriously? Was I talking too much? Stepping in where I had no business stepping in?
Then I started acting in a kind of addictive way. I was, a married man with kids, searching obsessively for women on the internet. I met some. I fell in love six times in six months. I would go up and down. Incredible highs when someone new fell in love with me, and crashing lows when it all fell apart.
I grew more and more erratic and irritable. I began to feel worse and worse about myself. I didn’t deserve happiness. I didn’d deserve a wonderful wife and kids. I didn’t deserve my job, and anyway, I was no good at it.
Did I say wtf? Not a bit. I didn’t question it at all. I was me. I am me.
My wife got really worried about me, and even I was worried about myself. I had a referral to a shrink, but I hadn’t acted on it. Then my wife got involved after I started telling her some of the things I’d been doing. She asked friends in the business, and she got a recommendation for a shrink, and got me rushed into it.
Of course, by that time, I knew what it was, and the shrink confirmed it. And the meds started. Lithium at first. It stabilized me somewhat. Then they added Welbutrin which brought me almost out of my depression, but couldn’t quite get me back to “normal.” Finally, lamictal.
Now, I’m myself again. And yet… When I asked, on here, who I was, Harp said the most useful thing. He said that all of the parts of me are me. I just have to find a way to integrate them.
There’s no doubt that I am very different now that I was a year ago, and different again than what I was three years ago. There’s no doubt that chemicals can influence not only how I feel, but what I think! Yes. Chemicals actually changed my thoughts. Once the meds were in me, I could no longer conceive of thinking the way I had. I could not imagine committing suicide, or feeling like I only deserved to be in a stinky, fishy gutter somewhere in a dank, dangerous part of town.
Who am I, if my brain and my identity can be manipulated to easily by a few chemicals? Am I just a machine? Are we all machines, thinking what the chemicals make us think?
All I know is that that guy who yelled at his kids who he loves more than anything, and who cheated on his wife, and who wanted to die; that me isn’t me. It wasn’t me.
And yet, it was, and it is.
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